After looking through this thread to say I feel like I'm in over my head is an understatement. I would like to try my hand at building a simple quad. Are the esc's the same as the ones on my planes? From what I'm reading there are 4 parts. The motors, ESC's, Rx, controll board. Of course the battery and Tx but those are a given. Is there a simple setup I can try out? Thanks all.

After looking through this thread to say I feel like I'm in over my head is an understatement. I would like to try my hand at building a simple quad. Are the esc's the same as the ones on my planes? From what I'm reading there are 4 parts. The motors, ESC's, Rx, controll board. Of course the battery and Tx but those are a given. Is there a simple setup I can try out? Thanks all.

Tom

That's about it, except for the frame you build from whatever you like. In the end it'll be exactly the same variety of components you might have had on a prebuilt quad, except for the frame of course. And you have to set up the flight controller and get all the various wires in the right place, but that's not really hard to do and you're going to learn it sooner or later.

Plus you have the folks on this forum to help you along. We were all beginners once.

Here's a good mix of components that I think works well:

4- DT750 motors
4- 10x4.5 slowfly props of the proper rotations (CW & CCW- two of each, but buy a bunch because you'll break some learning to fly)
4- 30 amp ESCs (RCTimer house brand or HobbyKing F-20)
1- HK v2.1 board (cheap, easy to setup) or the HK KK 2.0 boards (still cheap but more features and maybe not as easy to setup, but not hard, very popular right now)
1- 2200mah 30C 3s battery (you can start with one, but you'll probably want more- maybe you already have some)
Your homemade frame
Your RX and Tx

Those are the major components, but there are all sorts of nuts, bolts, wires, connectors and what not to complete it, but nothing difficult.

Take 2 is progressing quickly, this time with a faster frame and more though put into routing and battery mechanics. I should have it fight worth tomorrow, lets hope it lasts more than one flight this time.

I have taken the basic wooden h quad and made some small alterations that should be pretty obvious in the pics. Unfortunately it's only allowing one pic at this time. This one shows it mostly assembled waiting for the battery plate on top. What you can't see is the power wiring under the KK board.

Images

Thanks everyone. I'll go watch the tutorials and read some more. It looks like a fun build. I started out like everyone else flying CX helis and then went to 4ch then to 6 ch CP. now I'm flying 3D planes but I've never built my own helicopter. The quads look fairly simple to fly. I say that now. LOL. Well thanks again. I'm off to read some more.

I'd really like to build one like the black one with the 4 turnigy motors and the camera on the bottom. Did you get the parts from a US seller? Also what parts would I need? I found the v2.1 and the KK2 boards at HK but still don't know what motors and esc's to get. It just needs to pick up a pair of cameras. Gopros maybe. Well back to the build videos. Those videos are really good. Thanks all.

Images

I have taken the basic wooden h quad and made some small alterations that should be pretty obvious in the pics. Unfortunately it's only allowing one pic at this time. This one shows it mostly assembled waiting for the battery plate on top. What you can't see is the power wiring under the KK board.